What exactly is inbound marketing and why are businesses talking so much about it? With inbound marketing, the focus is on generating relevant content in order to attract more views while adding value to customer purchases. Ultimately, the goal is to attract those visitors to you, convert them into customers and exceed their expectations for the rest of their buying journey. So how exactly do you attract the right people? The main step is to identify your target audience, all thanks to the help of a strong inbound campaign.
To identify your target audience you must ask a few questions: Who are you trying to reach? Who are your ideal customers? Think about where they would go to gain the resources they need.
Beyond identifying your target audience there are many components that make up a successful inbound campaign, you'll find them listed below, following one of our very own campaigns:
Premium Content
First and foremost, think about how downloadable offers can reach the right people. These can take the forms of ebooks, infographics, case studies and more. Creating valuable content that sparks the interest of customers and is an enticing offer, is the only way you’ll get readers to download.
When should you promote your downloadable offer? When are readers more likely to take an interest in it? Most likely when it is new, fresh, not written about or not offered many times before. Making sure your downloadable has value is extremely important too. When it has a good reputation, is perceived as valuable to others and comes with proof of results, are key. This is a good way to develop a reliable audience of readers and know exactly how to target them best. For this article, we will follow the progression of our leading inbound campaign, an eBook titled 'The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks and Ideas.'
Read our eBook - 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas
Promote through Social Media
Using promotional social posts are also an effective tool when trying to reach the right customers. With the help of social media tools, you are able to target based on age, location, gender, life events and more. Essentially, choosing exactly who you hope to target. These posts can lead to those downloadable offers, landing pages, your website, or all of the above.
Lead to a Landing Page
How you showcase those downloadable offers should be your next thought. Typically, landing pages are great tools to house your offers on. When it comes down to their purpose, they are effective in the transition of leads to paying customers. Visitors end up on your landing page either from your website, social posts or through generated content such as blog posts or articles. Write content that speaks to a specific audience. People interested in the content you generate will most likely turn into dependable customers. They will be able to gain that knowledge from you and trust your words, leading to overall dependability.
Pro Tip: Never include website navigation, social links, or any other content that will distract website visitor from filling in the form.
Never forget the Thank You Page
So what happens after someone visits your landing page and downloads an offer? One of the most crucial next steps includes a thank you page. This can include testimonials, case studies, next steps and more. Why are they so important? The biggest reason is the fact that they reaffirm the customer they made the right choice with you. From trust to urging customers to explore your website and company further are the main purposes of this page.
Pro Tip: Always offer something else on your Thank You pages, this is a great time to provide the visitor with another offer, email signup, or related blog posts.
Automated Emails
Automated emails within your inbound campaign can additionally identify your target audience. This allows you to keep in contact with your existing customers while additionally reaching new ones. With an already existing list, you know exactly how to satisfy their wants and meet their needs. Once a list is created, make sure to continually target them without being too “salesy”. Determine what content these users want to see, what they find valuable and what they will most likely take action on. Whether it be a newsletter every week, the latest sales, or information they signed up for. Reaching your target audience through email can also be more easily achieved when the email is personal. People want to be valued and speaking directly to them is a good way to achieve higher open and click-through rates.
Trying to reach a new audience through email can be easy, as long as you use the right techniques. After attending a conference, a trade show or any of the like, make sure to have collected some emails. Whether it be through them putting in their email to win a prize or signing up to receive special perks, get those emails.
Triggered Emails Convert
Once you have both new and old emails, set up automated behavior emails. Whether they visited a specific page on your website, you are welcoming them for signing up and more, these triggered emails have a high open rate. These emails should continue to be highly personal, but at the same time, can be sent across various paths.
Paid Advertising
Thinking of using paid media to reach your target audiences? Great idea! Targeting users through paid advertising can be extremely effective, as long as you are using the right tools. Know your target audience. If you are aiming to target users over the age of 80, it might not necessarily make sense to purchase Facebook or Instagram ads. Instead, you might want to look towards a television commercial on one of the major broadcast channels.
Knowing who you want to reach, your overall budget and what social platforms or mediums you hope you use, are all important factors to be considered. Facebook is a great tool to help specify and target specific groups of people. You can target based on age, gender, location, life events, buying habits and more. If you are a bridal boutique, you can easily target women, ages 23-35, living in a certain area and recently engaged. This target audience is most likely starting their wedding dress search and seeing your boutique will get them in the dress shopping frame of mind. You are able to spend as little or as much as you want on your ad to run for a specified number of days.
Using an inbound marketing campaign made up of these various components are extremely effective when trying to reach your target audience. Making your business stand out from the rest using offers, emails, social posts, and paid advertising are all great ways to reel your customers in.
